The Soil (La terre): A Realistic Novel

by Émile Zola

In justice to Hyacinthe, however, it must be said that he fairly divided everything with the old man; and, if he robbed him, he also kept him amused. The lazy fellow, with his knavishness, was, at all events, a better sort than Buteau, and indeed he often boasted to that effect. At first, when his belly was delighted with fat living, he dropped all thought even about his father's supposed hoard, and did not make the least attempt to discover anything concerning it. Old Fouan was quite free to do as he pleased so long as he cheerfully provided the means for their festive junketings. It was only during the second fortnight of the month, when the old man's pockets were quite empty, that his son indulged in speculations as to where the money of which he had caught a glimpse could be hidden away. He could not get hold of a copper of it. He grumbled at La Trouille who served him dish after dish of potatoes without butter; and, as he felt a painful void in his belly, he reflected that it was really most idiotic for them to remain on such short commons simply for the sake of hoarding up some money. It would certainly be necessary to unearth that hoard some day and have a fling with it.

Still, even on the evenings when he had fared most wretchedly, and when he felt utterly weary and tired out, he bravely struggled against circumstances, and was as genial and hilarious as if he had just made an excellent dinner: restoring the general gaiety by a cannonade of heavy guns.

"There, that's for the turnips, La Trouille, and that's for the butter!" he cried.

Fouan, too, kept brisk and cheerful even during those painful times—the last days of the month—for the daughter and the father then scoured the country for the means of keeping the pot boiling, and the old man, who was gradually induced to join them, ended by employing his time in the same way. He had become angry when he first saw La Trouille come home with a fowl which she had fished up from over a wall with a piece of looped string; but on a second occasion she made him shake with laughter by attaching a hook baited with some meat to the end of a string, which she concealed among the branches of a tree, allowing the baited hook to dangle down in front of a troop of ducks who were taking a walk. One of them suddenly rushed forward, and swallowed meat, hook, and string at a bolt. Then it immediately rose in the air, being sharply pulled up by the girl, before it was able to utter a single quack. This was not a very honest proceeding certainly; but they argued that animals which lived out-of-doors belonged to those who could catch them, and that so long as one did not steal money, one's honesty could not be impeached. From that time the old man took some interest in the adventures of the young marauder, who performed some scarcely credible feats, such as stealing a sack of potatoes and then getting the owner of them to help her to carry them home; milking cows out at pasture into a bottle; and sinking the laundresses' linen to the bottom of the Aigre by loading it with stones, and then going and fishing it up again during the night.

She was continually to be met on the roads, her geese affording her a pretext for her perpetual wanderings, and she would sit for hours on the slope of a ditch on the look-out for an opportunity, with a sleepy, innocent air, as though she had not a thought in the world beyond attending to her geese. She often even made use of these latter as watch-dogs, the gander giving her notice, by his hissing, of the inopportune approach of any one who might surprise her at work. She was now eighteen years old, but she was scarcely any taller than she had been at twelve; being still as slight and supple as a hazel-branch, with her kid-like head, her green eyes, and her large mouth, twisted towards the left. Her little, childish bosom had grown hard beneath her father's old blouses, without in any way developing. She was more like a boy than a girl, and seemed to care about nothing save her geese. However, although she scoffed contemptuously at men, this did not prevent her, when she got larking with some lad of her own age, from ending with a little amatory amusement, almost as a matter of course, for it seemed to her quite natural, and no consequences ever followed. She was lucky enough to keep clear of the tramps and vagrants that passed along the roads, for grown-up men, finding nothing tempting about her, left her alone. As her grandfather said, amused and won over by her quaint ways, apart from the fact that she was given to thieving and didn't care much about decency, she was a rum sort of girl, more decorous and less disreputable than might have been expected.

Fouan found especial amusement in accompanying Hyacinthe in his prowling rambles about the fields. Every peasant, even the most honest, is at heart a poacher, and the old man took a deep interest in the setting of snares, and the laying of lines, and in all the various other ingenious devices of this campaign of ruses, this continual warfare carried on against gamekeepers and gendarmes. As soon as the laced hats and yellow shoulder belts of the latter were seen emerging from a lane and making their way through a corn field, the father and son, lying on some sloping bank, pretended to be asleep. Presently, however the son would creep on his hands and knees along the ditch, and take up his traps; while the father, with his honest elderly countenance, would keep a careful watch on the receding hats and shoulder belts.

There were some splendid trout in the Aigre, which they sold for forty and fifty sous apiece to a dealer at Châteaudun, but the fish were so artful that it was necessary for the men to lie flat on their stomachs on the grass watching them for hours. They often, too, sallied out as far as the Loir, from whose slimy bed some very fine eels were to be obtained. When his lines brought him nothing, Hyacinthe had a very simple plan for securing a haul. During the night he plundered the fish-preserves of the river-side residents. Fishing, however, he only indulged in as an occasional amusement; the pursuit of game was his absorbing passion. He ravaged the neighbourhood for miles around, and no prey was too humble for him. He would snare quails as well as partridges, and even starlings as well as larks. He seldom fired a gun, for the report of firearms carried too far over a level expanse. There was not a single covey of partridges that ever rose from the clover and lucern without his recognising it, and he knew perfectly well when and where he could easily lay his hands upon the young birds, drowsy with sleep and soaked with the night-dew. He was extremely clever in liming twigs for the capture of larks and quails, and he hurled stones with a deadly aim at the dense flocks of starlings which the high winds of autumn brought into the district. For twenty years past he had been exterminating the game of the neighbourhood, and there was now scarcely a rabbit to be seen amongst the brushwood about the Aigre, a fact which extremely angered the local sportsmen. It was only the hares that escaped him. There were very few of them, however, and what there were scampered safe from his pursuit over the open country, where it was too risky to follow them. He smacked his lips at the thought of the few hares which were to be found on the La Borderie land, and every now and then he risked being sent to gaol, by sending one rolling over with a shot from his gun. When Fouan saw him going out with his gun, he always refused to accompany him. It was too hazardous and foolish, he said; he would certainly get caught one day or other.

And caught he did get, as was only natural. Farmer Hourdequin, exasperated by the destruction of his game, had given the most stringent orders to Bécu, and the latter annoyed at never being able to catch any one, had determined to pass his nights on a stack and keep watch. One morning, just at daybreak, the report of a gun, the flame of which flashed in front of his face, awoke him with a start. It was Hyacinthe, on the look-out behind the stack, who had just killed a hare at short range.

"Ah, God Almighty! it's you, is it?" cried the rural constable, seizing hold of the gun which the other had laid down so as to pick up the hare. "Ah! you scamp, I ought to have guessed it was you!"

They were boon companions at the taverns, but in the fields they could not meet without danger; the one being constantly on the point of arresting the other, and the latter being determined to wring his neck.